The annual summer sale on Steam has become a significant enough event that there have been murmurs of concern from the gaming community because Valve hasn't been talking about it. A post to the Steam Users' Forums by Valve's Mike Blaszczak should offer the necessary reassurance: "We are planning a sale sometime this summer. Hope that helps!" Thanks VG247 via GameTrailers.

Dev wrote on Jul 6, 2012, 19:40:They should run awesome summer sales RIGHT NOW THIS WEEK on ORIGIN before valve starts theirs.

To a game consumer though what the hell difference does it make? If he can get his EA games inexpensively from digital distributors like Amazon game downloads and Gamersgate which regularly have heavily discounted sales on EA games, it doesn't make any difference. Game codes from both of those distributors can even be redeemed on Origin to download the games if that is what the customer wants.

EA may very well be segregating its digital sales efforts by reserving Origin as its "premium" sales platform for its own games in an effort not to devalue the brand names of its games while leaving the heavily discounted sales to third-parties like Amazon. And, whether you think that is a wise marketing strategy or not, as a game consumer you shouldn't care because you can still get your EA games on the cheap from the third-parties. Therefore bashing EA for not having a sale on Origin is pointless and just an empty excuse to bash EA.